Peeping Tom

Released by StudioCanal Michael Powell's derided upon release but now lauded 1960 masterpiece is issued with a new 4K restoration release.

Starring Bohm and a plethora of British acting talent from the late 1950s, this is a rich and lush film ripe for the technical upgrades a restoration will provide.

His tale of voyeurism and a sympathetic serial killer, the film was released the same year as Powell's countryman Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho, a film that shares similar DNA and has had a shared revisionism to them both.

Carl Boehm elicits such a depth of vulnerability to the killer Mark, his aloofness and foreign-ness playing into the hands of the viewer. A criticism that would be aimed at Anthony Perkins' performance, the appeal of finding something within somebody evil made it seem unseemly for filmgoers, but the 1960s was a dawn of a new era of film-making with colour everywhere and new horizons abounding.

Having watched the film years ago, one forgot that the mother of Helen (Anna Massey), the girl downstairs who Mark takes a shine to, is in fact blind therefore she cannot be a victim of Mark. It is such a clever narrative idea in terms of character growth, development and a layer of intrigue for all.

As ever with Powell, there is a richness in the cinematography and the detail of production polish is paramount to the film being so well admired by all comers especially Martin Scorsese.

Powell does wonderful tricks with editing, sound design and a use of location - he borrows from Hitchcock in terms of building up tension such as with Moira Shearer's death where he constant moving puts us on edge as Mark hovers around her creating a murder scene without her knowing.

Peeping Tom is out on Blu-Ray/DVD from StudiocanalUK. Special features include an essay by Sir Christopher Frayling, a featurette Restoring Peeping Tom, intro by Scorsese, interview with Thelma Schoonmaker (2007), Powell's wife and an audio commentary by Ian Christie.

Spaceship

Released on Friday 19th May from Trinity Media, this is writer/director Alex Taylor debut feature length feature , and it is a work of independent spirit coupled with an unflagging desire to make a film of a unique voice and identity that is rarely seen in British cinema.

Taylor speaks of how he has made a film about teenagers by teenagers, encountering young people and giving them the platform to make a movie based on their own stories with them forming the narrative flow and thrust without pandering or patronising their role in society.

Using improvisation, Taylor follows his young cast and this enables him to tell a film that is in their own language engaging in several social groups from goths to punks to those who hang out in the YMCA.

Lucidia is a teenage cyber-goth, who fakes her own alien abduction, forcing her father Gabriel to search for her in a kaleidoscopic world of parallel universes, black holes and unicorns.

Enthused with the power of youth, bristling with colour and energy, Spaceship is unlike anything you have ever seen before nor probably see again. Touching on how teenagers search for a sense of belonging in an ever-changing, frustrating world this touches on the boundaries of fact and fiction, control and chaos, normality and hallucinatory.

Featuring a strong ensemble cast, wonderful sound design and a soundtrack featuring Appaloosa, Best Coast and East India Youth, Spaceship could well be one of the most unsung films of 2017

Spaceship is released on 19th May from Trinity Media
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Ex Machina Exceeds Expectations

EX MACHINA (Alex Garland, UK, 2014)
Widely exalted for his works as a novelist including the smash hit The Beach as well as providing screenplays for Sunshine, 28 Days Later and Never Let Me Go, Alex Garland's directorial debut is an original work based on many famous facets of robots in cinema as well as expressing his love of science fiction with Ex Machina.

The film begins with Caleb Smith (Domhnall Gleeson) winning a competition at his fictional company BlueBook to spend a week with his elusive boss Nathan Bateman (Oscar Isaac) in his reclusive home in Alaska. When there, Nathan asks Caleb to participate in a Turing test to talk to an AI robot Nathan has constructed and to see if his model Ava (Alicia Vikander) has consciousness.

What follows is a lot of smoke and mirrors as all three play games with one another, Nathan using Caleb to his will to see if the robot has feelings for him, Caleb realising he did not win a competition but is instead a pawn in an elaborate scheme and Ava herself planning to escape from her enforced prison by Nathan.

Garland's screenplay is expertly economical never wasting a word with unnecessary exposition, in essence treating his audience with the intelligence they deserve. Garland also shows a sure hand behind the camera creating an elaborate set design and changing the scene accordingly, helped by his cinematographer Rob Hardy who uses the sessions between Ava and Caleb as an ever increasing stand off as they are lit differently the longer the week goes on.

Garland exudes the movie with a wonderful tempo full of purpose and foreboding, helped by an excellent electronic score by Geoff Barrow and Ben Salisbury.

All three of the leading players are exceptional, Isaac is all ego but not without the charm needed to succeed at the top of his profession, Gleeson gives Caleb a mixture of innocence and loneliness in contrast to the high minded Nathan whilst Vikander brings the correct type of iciness to her portrayal of a very real robot.

With twists aplenty, the final message from the film is not so much a warning but an extension of the most Darwinist of ideals - if as Stephen Hawking has mentioned recently that AI might well exceed humans sooner rather than later - Garland's film makes the statement that in the end it is very much a survival of the fittest and the final image of Ava amongst humans suggests how would we be able to tell the robot from the humans, our advancements in technology might create our own downfall.

Ex Machina is out now on general release from Universal Pictures.

Electricity

 

After having reviewed the trailer, it was my pleasure to watch and review this new British film Electricity by director Bryn Higgins, and featuring a star making performance by former super model Agyness Deyn.

Deyn plays Lily, a small town girl who works on the seafront arcade but suffers from epilepsy, which causes her to have severe blackouts. She is a popular girl and friendly with the police constable who takes her home after her most recent episode.  The story moves to London, when Lily gains advice that her absent brother, Mikey, is alive and well in the Big Smoke. The pair were close when younger before they were split up and put into care.As Lily steps off the train at Kings Cross, she is full of that same ambition, and then promptly mugged and beaten up. 

Obviously in this day and age it is easier for Lily to go to London than it was for those angry young men of the kitchen sink, but what she finds is a scary world full of people as afflicted as her due to social constraints (homelessness) or sexual identity, the relationship with a lesbian is delicately portrayed when it could have been titilating.

The reason the tone is so thoughtful is the restrained direction of Higgins who saves his visual flair for Lily's internal attacks when we get the floating and hallucinogenic point of view camerawork; yet the most credit goes to Deyn who gives a performance not only of unexpected surprise but fulfilled potential.

Having quit the runway for the filmic red carpet, Deyn has appeared in several British flicks like Pusher, here the opportunity to bite her teeth into a role of real substance instead of objectified women in roles of lap dancer or prostitute.

Deyn herself is a working class girl from Rossendale, Lancashire who made good, so her connection to Lily is apparent and it is refreshing to see a beautiful woman portray herself and her character in such unflattering positions, such as when Lily has an episode and has urinated herself.  The little trait of always having clean underwear in her bag in case is a credit to her research in preparation for the role.

The film is built around Deyn's performance and it is a shame that the adapted screenplay by Joe Fisher based on the novel by Ray Robinson did not have the belief the performance warranted, not helped by those same characters conflicted by sexual identity, the lesbian who lets her live with her free of charge. This is London right?

Yet go see Deyn in a very convincing performance, one this writer hopes gains award attention in the new year,  and to think Deyn has had no formal acting training. In the words of Noel Gallagher, another Northerner like Deyn, 'She's Electric'

Electricity is out in Friday 12th December on a limited release from Soda Pictures.

The Comedian

Tom Shkolnik's feature debut The Comedian (2012) tells the story of wannabe stand up comedian Ed (Edward Hogg) who has to contend with a mundane call centre job whilst fight feelings of intimacy for his flatmate Elisa (Elisa Lasowski) and the new blossoming relationship with Nathan (Nathan Stewart-Jarrett of E4's Misfits).

Shkolnik comes to this feature having found some recognition for his short films and his professional relationship with producer Dan McCulloch led to the success of One Happy Moment which was made for the Digital Shorts scheme and BBC Films.

The film shot over 90 hours of footage to garner this film that lasts for only 72 minutes.  This may seem startling but that is down partly to the 'Rules of the Game' which include no script, only one take is allowed by two cameras at most.

Watching a film like The Comedian makes you realise why the script is just as important as any actor or director, the foundation of a narrative is imperative to any story whereas here Shkolnik is focused on showing a London that is real and indicative of the prevailing depression currently being experienced by the socio-economic population. Also that comedians do not make for the best of films due to the very internalised nature of the performer, even Scorcese and De Niro failed somewhat with The King of Comedy (1983) due to fact that Rupert Pupkin is sadly delusional

Ed hates his job, as he wants it to be fun and when he is told to buck up and improve he treats that as a threat to his existence.  His career as a stand-up does not seem promising as one bad gig ends with the compere criticising him in between performers ('Some people get up on stage and talk about gardening.  Others tell jokes') this is heard by us in the background whilst Ed sits backstage listening, beat up by how awful he was.  Ed spends a lot of time listening, and he gives the impression he is a better listener than communicator.

There are some nicely shot moments of photography by DoP Benjamin Kracun such as when Nathan walks down the street and a whiff of cigarette smoke floats into the air, but these moments are few and far between in a film that lacks a visual style for want of trying.

Nathan Stewart-Jarrett elicits the best performance of the film, adding some layers of complexity to a role that might have been thankless, but yet he makes you wonder how difficult it must be to live in a big city and be black and homosexual. The scene when they are pillored by young female homophobes on a bus journey home is quite startling and real, yet that is the only scene tinged with a real-ness about it.

Edward Hogg tries his best, and he could conceivably be a grandson of the original angry young men from up North in the 1960s with his Northern accent and self-critiquing behaviour (such as Tom Courtenay's Billy (Liar) Fisher) however, he is a confused young man who is unsure of what he wants and contradicts himself when something possible comes along, he attempts to reject it in a way that makes him seem selfless but in fact merely self-destructive.

Shkolnik states, 'I wanted to make a film about a London that I could recognise,' yet the fact you have an inter-racial homosexual relationship at the heart of the narrative and a French girl as the beautiful flatmate to this observer does not feel real but more forced unfortunately, as a way to say here is a white Northerner, a black Londoner and a foreigner as a means of ticking off the diversity checklist rather than showing London in a more real light.

The shooting of homosexual lovemaking do not match the intimacy of those in Weekend and Keep The Lights On - that showed the problematic nature of maturing a same-sex relationship in big cities far more effectively with a delicate tone and humility, the benefit those films had was a structure and fluency to the film-making process and intelligent scriptwriting.

The film may reach an audience who encourage the growth of British independent cinema, but anyone expecting a barrel of laughs will be sorely disappointed.

The Comedian is on limited release on Friday 31st May by Trinity Filmed Entertainment